Michigan

Letters: Bringing peace to the city

Over the past few months, our neighborhood has been rocked by violence: An abduction and assault on an elementary school student, two more abduction attempts; half a dozen shootings and a handful of murders. Just before Christmas, a young boy was shot and killed by another young boy in the middle of the street on a Sunday afternoon.

Stop. Breathe. Ask: What is going on here? What can we do to stop it? The hopelessness, lack of trust in any power structure to solve problems, and utter despair that is driving our young people to so devalue life (their own and others) is palpable right now.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. One of the leaders in our community recently reflected on this verse from the Bible, saying that often we expect too little when it comes to peacemaking. His reminder was that we are called to be peacemakers, not violence-enders. It’s true. Often, when violence slows down, we think we have a victory. But as we all know, the absence of violence is often just a void, a vacuum, in which the next bit of violence can fester and grow without bother. The notion of biblical peace is something different: It is a thing to fill the vacuum with wholeness, fullness.

It seems to me that people of faith and hope and love are called to be present in the violence, right in the heart of the chaos. In this sense, peacemaking is not a cheap, easy thing. It costs us, and demands that we explore and create opportunities to enter into violence and to stand — to BE — inbetween people who are in violence with each other. Jesus did this. He absorbed the hostility between people and created a new reality and a new community.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. What an opportunity for us. It’s when we are engaged in the practice of peace making that we get to discover our true identity as God’s children!!

During this season of joy and wonder, please keep the work of Community enCompass in mind. Your gifts, your time, your talent, your prayers are all things that help us stand present in and through the violence, creating a new reality of peace, right here, right now.